


June in Paris

by cookiegirl



Category: White Collar
Genre: Forgiveness, Gen, Paris (City), Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 07:19:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17700032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookiegirl/pseuds/cookiegirl
Summary: Ten months after he leaves New York for Paris, Neal encounters an old friend.





	June in Paris

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79/gifts).



In a way, saying goodbye to June was the hardest.

He didn’t say goodbye to Elizabeth, Diana or Jones at all, and he told himself that was for the best.

The goodbye to Mozzie wasn’t really a goodbye; it was a Queen of Hearts in his pocket, a clue, a promise, another turn in their game. He felt guilty, but he trusted Mozzie would work it out eventually. He knew their story wasn’t over.

Saying goodbye to Peter was like dying, so much so that he wasn’t sure whether it was the poison or the look on Peter’s face that was making his heart weaken. But he had a plan in place, and he’d left a whole storage container of explanations for him, when the time was right. He would see Peter again, even if it probably wouldn’t be on American soil, even if he didn’t know whether it would be on good terms or whether he’d be in handcuffs. He was saying goodbye to their life together in New York, to their partnership, but it wasn’t the end of everything.

But June -

Saying goodbye to June felt final. The last hug, the last “I love you” at the door of Neal’s apartment; that was the moment when Neal almost backed out of the whole charade. He almost clung to June longer than he should have, almost begged her to do the impossible, to keep him safe, wanting to believe she could protect him like the mother he wished he’d had.

But he didn't. He let go, thinking that she was the one person he was most likely to never see again.

Which is why, ten months later, he is so surprised when she’s the first person from his old life to turn up in Paris.

\---

Walking to work alongside the Seine hasn't gotten old. This morning, the early summer sun reflects off the water to Neal’s right-hand side, and glints across the glass-roofed boats waiting to ferry tourists along the river. To his left, the sun warms the pale stone of the Musee d’Orsay, turning it golden. Even after nine months of working at the museum, Neal isn’t immune to the sight of the building as he approaches. The Beaux-Arts architecture is elegant and imposing at once, and the huge arched windows, which span several floors, cast back the light of the day so that the building seems to glow. A hundred years ago it was a train station, filled with people rushing from place to place; now it’s been converted to a haven, a place to stand still and appreciate beauty. The perfect venue, Neal has thought more than once, for a person to finally figure out how to stop running.

He takes his hat from his head and turns it lazily in his hand as he climbs the few steps to the entrance and slips inside, bypassing the queue of ticket-holders and letting himself in through the barrier with his employee card. Entering the building is a joy in itself, seeing the huge hall stretching out in front of him, light spilling down through the curved glass ceiling and casting patterns across the polished flagstone floor. He has a busy day ahead, and yet he feels the familiar sense of calm that always washes over him here.

His mind is already turning to the decisions he needs to make today about how to stage their latest sculpture exhibit, when he catches a glimpse of something - some _one?_ \- out of the corner of his eye. The sense of calm disappears instantly, and his heart starts beating faster before he’s even registered what he’s seen. He looks again in the direction of whatever it was that grabbed his attention. It’s the back of a lady, that he sees now only in snatches between the movement of other museum-goers. He sees brown hair with caramel highlights, flicked out at the bottom; a brightly coloured silk scarf, with a designer pattern; perfect posture born of wealth and self-assurance, age and experience. It’s all so familiar, and yet it can’t be - 

_It can't be._

He hasn’t spent his time in Paris looking over his shoulder. He hasn’t imagined an old friend or enemy around every corner, hasn’t waited to see Peter, or another FBI agent, or one of the Pink Panthers. He made sure his plan was perfect: his death was irrefutable, and his life here was all but bulletproof, his identification the best that money could buy, his art history and philosophy degrees perfectly forged, his assistant curator references backed up by money and friends in the right places. There was no reason to suspect anyone would come after him. And he knew that searching for a familiar face in every crowd would only drive him crazy or lead to disappointment. So he hasn’t looked. This is the first time he’s really thought -

He swallows, takes a step back. The lady is several feet in front of him, talking to the museum's only private tour guide, available to hire for a handsome fee for those who don't wish to tour in a group. He's too far away to hear her voice, and at the wrong angle to see her face, and part of him wants to leave right now, to head straight back through the barrier and out into the sun, while this could still be a silly mistake, or a fantasy created from too many late nights and too much wine. 

He wants, as he always does, to run.

But he has to know. It might be stupid, and reckless, and the answer might break his heart either way, but those things have never stopped him before.

Getting closer isn't hard, once he's decided to do so. The ground floor hall is made up of several partially walled-off areas on each side, surrounding a wide central corridor, with exhibits in each of the half-walled rooms, as well as art on both sides of the corridor. It's easy for Neal to duck into one of the side areas and sidle closer to where the lady and the tour guide stand in the central passage. His heart thuds. In just a few steps he’ll be able to situate himself on the other side of the barrier, and a thin wall will be all that will separate them. He won't be able to see her, but he'll be able to hear her -

And, _oh_.

“-most interested in seeing the post-Impressionist works,” she's saying, but Neal barely registers the words, because the voice is so gut-wrenchingly familiar. It's soft and warm and refined; it's family and home and belonging. It's coffee on the rooftop and singing by the piano; it’s knowing that there's someone who will always be there, not wanting anything from him, not judging, not demanding. It's the past, crashing back over him, turning his hands sweaty and trapping his breath in his chest.

He leans against the wall, supporting himself to stop his knees buckling. He's spent so long deliberately not thinking about his time in New York, not thinking about the people he left behind, shutting them into neat, safe compartments in his mind. He’s refused to let himself dwell, to wonder what his old friends were doing, determined to focus on his new beginning. It’s only at night when he is drifting off to sleep that the defences that shore up the rooms in his brain sometimes drop and he has to fight to push away the memories. 

And now June is here, right here, and he honestly doesn't know what to do.

His feet, though, seem to know. June is moving away, down the central esplanade of the museum, and her voice draws him along, his steps seemingly out of his own control. He moves along the other side of the wall, with her and not with her. Seven inches of brick and plaster apart, the voices of her and her guide still drifting over the top of the barrier.

“Are there any of the early Impressionists you’d like to visit?” the guide is asking her now. “If not, we can head straight to the second floor.”

“Well,” says June - and Neal’s chest aches just from hearing her speak - “I admit I am partial to a Degas.”

Neal remembers her telling him that, years ago, while she looked at the _Entrance of the Masked Dancers_ painting that he'd forged in his apartment, propped up next to the original. Back when the treasure had been a millstone around his neck, he'd promised her an original Caffrey one day, but in the style of Degas, for her sitting room. He promised her it would be a continuation of Degas’ dancers theme - an after-performance celebration. And then the thought had been lost amidst the running and the island and everything that followed, and he had never done it.

There were so many things he thought he’d have time to do one day, back then. So many things he had to leave undone.

“Then, ma’am,” the guide is saying to June, “I must take you straight to Salle 13. We have a wonderful collection. _Portrait de famille_ and _Le violoncelliste Pilet_ are some of his most interesting works. Seeing a Degas up close is quite the experience.”

“I’m familiar,” June says mildly, and Neal smiles. And then yearns to smile at her, with her. 

He makes his way through the maze of small rooms that make up the ground floor until he is behind the far side of Salle 13, making sure he takes a route that won’t cross paths with theirs. He waits, and soon enough the two enter the room, the guide reeling off Degas information and June making polite noises. It should be difficult to pick out their voices in the hum of other museum-goers, but it’s second nature to Neal to hone in on specific voices. Then there is silence for a while, as June takes in the paintings.

“What brings you all the way to Paris?” the guide asks her, after a few moments.

“An old friend,” June says, and Neal can hear the tenderness in her voice. And something else, too: grief. His heart contracts.

“Ah, he is not with you today, though?” 

“He passed away a few months ago. But he always spoke of Europe with such fondness, of the architecture and the culture and the food. He had a way of bringing places to life with his words. Many an evening we'd sit and talk, and he'd tell me about the museums he had… visited.” 

Neal smiles despite the pain in his chest and the rawness in his throat. Many an evening he'd sat with June and told her about the museums he had stolen from, about his cons across the world. He had told her more about them than anyone - maybe even Mozzie. She knew the cons he’d pulled with Kate, with Moz, with Alex, and the few he’d done alone. She had no need for plausible deniability, and she loved to hear the details, the score. They would sip wine and eat amaretti biscuits on the terrace in the summer, or drink cocoa in front of the fire in the winter, Bugsy curled at their feet.

“And so,” June continues, “I thought I would come to see them for myself. You never know how much time you have left to see these places. And I wish he could have experienced them all again. I suppose you might say I’ve come to see them for him as well, in a way.” 

The guilt that has been lodged like a weight in his ribcage drops hard into his stomach.

He hates what he has put her through; what he is still putting her through. And what is he doing now, following her around the museum, snatching tiny pieces of nostalgia and comfort when he doesn’t deserve them, when he has conned her and left her to deal with his death? 

He shakes himself. He has to get out of the way, and quickly. Meeting her now will only cause her more pain, will only show her that he was always more of a con than a man.

He steps away, sets his hat on his head, turns towards his office. He hasn’t even seen her face. If he tries hard, he can pretend she was never there. And in a couple of hours, when she’s toured the post-Impressionists, she really will be gone. He’ll be by himself again. He can get on with his life here, and forget again.

\---

Hours later, he heads to the top floor for a late lunch, sure June will have left by now. The cafe Campana is one of his favorite places in the museum. It's not the strangely-shaped chairs that are pieces of modern art themselves, nor the sculptures made from fishing nets, nor the glowing golden lights that hover above every table. It's not even the food that makes Neal love the restaurant so much. It's the huge transparent clock face that dominates one wall, a remnant of the station the building once was. The clock is a window, many times his own height, looking out over the city, and the iron hand clunks heavily as each minute ticks past. Neal loves that clock, and the view through it: the Sacré Coeur Basilica sitting high on the hill of Montmartre, bright white against the sky. 

He looks to the clock now, taking comfort in knowing that the view behind those iron hands never changes; some things endure, even while the days and years slip by. Some things are not governed by time.

But today he doesn’t see the view, because there, sitting alone at a table right by the clock, is June.

It’s the first time he’s seen her face in ten months, and it makes everything that he’s been doing to help him keep the past at a distance fall away. It all floods back. The city, the home, the people that he loved. _Loves._ New York collides with Paris and leaves him dizzy.

He could leave without letting her know again, he thinks wildly. He _should_ leave again.

But he finds he cannot walk away from her twice in one day. 

He runs his tongue over his lips, trying to conjure up some words that he can start with, trying to kick his brain into gear. But he can’t help but fear her reaction. She’d be right to be furious. He'd like to think she'd laugh, delighted with the subterfuge, but it can’t be that easy. He knows she'll have cried for him, mourned him - is still mourning him. Will he be destroying her memories of him, by revealing he’s the sort of person who could con his loved ones into thinking he was dead? Is it really fair to show himself?

And is it fair not to, when she's right here?

His feet carry him to her table before he has settled on an answer. His body is betraying him today.

June is looking through the clock window, mesmerized by the view, and doesn’t see him approach. He stops nearby, just a few feet away, and tries again to find words. And then he sees a change in June’s posture, the tensing of someone who knows she is being watched, and she turns, slowly, and their eyes meet.

“June,” he says, and it comes out sounding foreign: desperate, cracked, pleading.

June stares. Neal isn’t sure he’s ever seen someone look so shocked. Her hand goes to her mouth, and he sees it tremble. He steps forward, closer, and then closer again, stumbling almost, hoping she won’t flinch away.

She doesn’t. She rises, and reaches towards him with shaking hands. She grabs his arms, and holds him in place while she looks at him. While she checks he’s real. Her fingers are tight around his upper arms and for a moment he thinks she might be holding him up without realising it. He waits for her to shout, to slap him, to walk away. 

“June?” he says again, and her face crumples. His heart sinks, but then she is pulling him to her, holding him tighter than she ever has before, and he is clutching her back, as if he is drowning.

He’s not sure how long they stand like that, in the restaurant, while the giant clock ticks behind them, but eventually June pulls back and wipes the tears carefully from her eyes. 

“Neal,” she says, and it’s not the accusation he thought it might be. It sounds like a welcome home.

He nods, not trusting himself to speak. It’s been ten months since anyone’s called him Neal, though he still thinks of himself that way. 

“Sit,” June says, her voice shaking a little, and he does, next to her rather than opposite her, because he can’t bear the thought of anything between them right now, even a table.

“Are you well?” he asks quietly, and she nods.

“It’s really you?” she says, lifting a hand to his face and cupping it gently.

“I’m so sorry, June,” Neal replies, feeling himself melt into her touch for the moment before she draws her hand back. “I didn’t - I didn’t feel like I had any choice. The Panthers -”

“I know,” June says, her voice soft, her smile sad. “They would have killed everyone you loved. Mozzie told me that so many times, when he was trying to convince me you weren’t dead. He was so sure, for a while, that you’d taken yourself off somewhere to protect us all. I wanted to believe him, but...” She shakes her head, and Neal sees it in her eyes: the pain of hearing about his fate, the pain of having to tell Mozzie over and over that he really was dead. The pain of packing up his things in his old apartment, of leaving those suits to be unworn once again.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again, but June hushes him and puts her hand over his.

“No,” she says. “I’m just so glad -” she breaks off, overcome, and takes a sip of her drink to steady herself. 

“So, Paris?” she asks, and Neal knows she is trying to move to safer ground, to keep her composure in public. “Have you been here all along?”

He nods. “I’ve gone straight,” he says with a half-smile, and shows her his employee card. 

“Curator?”

“Keeps me busy,” Neal says, shrugging. “I’m working on a few things in the evenings… my own art. And the city is beautiful, and the people are great.” His life here is good, it is, even if it’s not what he had once hoped for. Even if it still doesn’t quite feel like home.

“That’s wonderful, Neal,” June says sincerely. Then she raises an eyebrow. “So you’re a fine, upstanding member of society now?” she asks, her own half-smile reflecting Neal’s.

“As upstanding as you can be with a fake name and qualifications and a stash of ill-gotten gains to draw on,” Neal jokes lightly. He bites his lip. There are so many questions bubbling up inside of him, catching in his throat.

“How's Peter?” he manages to ask. “And Elizabeth? And...the baby? Do you - have you seen them?”

June’s expression falls slightly. “A little,” she says. “They’re doing okay. Elizabeth’s a wonderful mother, but I’m sure you could have guessed that. And Peter is besotted with the little one. But he’s…”

Neal watches her carefully. “He’s what?” he asks, scared to know.

June shrugs a little. “He’s sad,” she says, and it’s so simple and obviously true that Neal has to suck in the side of his mouth to stop the tears from coming.

“And Moz?” Neal asks, hesitantly.

“He’s accepted that you’re gone, at last,” June replies. She shakes her head and smiles. “He’ll be able to tell me he told me so, when he finds out the truth.”

Neal feels a wave of panic. “June - you can’t - they can’t know. Not yet. I have a plan, but…” The thought trails off. Actually putting the plan into action, sending the number of the storage container, facing those he has left behind, is terrifying. He can’t be sure what their reaction will be.

June’s face creases with sympathy and she pats his hand. “I’ll keep your secret,” she says, and he knows she will add it to the long list of other things she knows about him and can never tell.

“Do you think they'll ever be able to -” He stops, unable to ask a question he fears the answer to so much. 

“I think,” June says carefully, knowing instinctively Neal’s question, “that people can have an endless capacity for forgiveness when it comes to someone they love.”

“And you?” Neal asks. “I hate that I conned you. Can you forgive me?” 

“Oh, Neal. There’s nothing to forgive.”

This time the tears do come, and Neal has to free his hand from June’s to dash them away. They sit quietly for a moment.

“Don't wait too long, to let them know,” June says. 

Neal hasn’t had a time in mind, not really, for when he will send the clue to Peter. Two years, three? A vague moment in the future when he can finally be sure it’s safe. When he can be sure the Panthers were no longer watching anyone from his old life. When everyone's nerves aren't so raw. When he can summon up the nerve. He wonders if the first two have already passed. Is waiting any longer really necessary? 

June is right. He'll put it into motion. It's time to stop pretending the past never happened.

“Okay,” he says.

June smiles, and pats his hand again. “I have three days before my flight leaves, and I’ve barely seen any of Paris yet. I want to see it all. I want to see all the places you spend your time these days. Eat in your cafes. And go dancing! You’ll show me around, won’t you?” She allows her eyes to twinkle a little. “And you’ll tell me all about how you got here?”

Neal swallows, amazed it is that simple, that she can forgive him so easily. Amazed that he can have this, even if just for a few days: the past in his present, new memories with an old friend. June’s simple acceptance makes him feel like anything is possible.

“It would be my pleasure,” he says.


End file.
